Ink Tea Stone Leaf

A place to get the words out

  • Reckoning with Juvenalia

    While I wait for my editor to send me back some more chapters from my novel to review, my mind has been drifting toward poetry. I’ve posted two new poems here in the last couple of weeks, and I’m preparing for a special month-long poetry feature for July that will help me tone up the… Continue reading

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  • Under the Open Sky

    Observe your breath in the chill of nightand hold the body that keeps you warm—to feel the stars of the northern skyarrest your eyes, to behold their redsand blues, to shiver, is such a lucky thing!With every call of the crickets, music—rivers, ribbits, a rhapsodyof forest played to the fallen treesand dedicated to darkened moon.The… Continue reading

  • A Little Lesson in the Legislative Process

    On certain occasions, the impulse to talk at the world like a social studies teacher becomes overwhelming. Some point of history or civics momentarily becomes interesting to the fraction of people who pay attention to current events, and then somebody has to write a blog post or record a video about the relevant lesson from… Continue reading

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  • Colossus of Roads

    Spanning high above the canyon’schaparral and stones, a dozenlanes afloat on pools of fog—thepurple rises in the easternsky, the orange west is blinding—I the driver chase the evening’slight to seek the summer’s daughterwading in the shallows, waiting,dressed in skin and sun, her shadowstretching tall across the sand—butI the driver, borne aloft bydreaming, borne by pillars… Continue reading

  • What I know about the trees in my backyard: a survey

    Disclaimer: I am not going to look anything up or fact-check any claims I may make about plant biology in this post. My intention is to draw a boundary between what I think that I know and what I know that I don’t know. Please do not rely upon my plant lore as evidence to… Continue reading

  • A Midsummer’s Day and Night Playlist

    When does summer truly begin? The astronomical among us define the summer season in the northern hemisphere as beginning with the June solstice, the day with the longest span of daylight each year.  However, the solstice is historically referred to in English as Midsummer’s Day, suggesting that by June 20th or so, historical people considered… Continue reading

  • Let’s Appreciate the Birds and the Cherries

    I’ve been a little neglectful of this blog space for a couple of weeks, and I’m sorry. Not on account of the sheer volume of my disappointed readership, but because putting out a little somethin’ somethin’ every week means something to me. It keeps me thinking and contributes to my sense of weekly rhythm. But… Continue reading

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  • Literary Retreat

    A couple of weeks ago, I talked to Ariele about making a fairly significant alteration in our home decor. For too long, I said, we have kept the majority of our books locked away in our bedroom, where hardly anybody sees them. The public areas of our house, where our guests are entertained and our… Continue reading

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  • Opera Report: May 2026

    Contextual note: Every three months my wife Ariele and I host an opera night for our friends at our house and via Discord, and while she does all the hard work of streaming and of updating the website where people vote for the shows, I contribute with an informal newsletter, sharing some history and other… Continue reading

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  • Every Conspiracy Theory Is Still Bad And You Should Think With Your Goddamned Brain

    It perpetually amazes me, that we have built a nearly universal social apparatus specifically to explain to children how the world works, and yet so many people don’t really understand anything that their paychecks do not absolutely depend upon their grasping. I could possibly live with this state of affairs if these people did not… Continue reading

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